To get to the bottom of these questions, it’s important to do some effective keyword research. This is because, at its core, keywords reflect the voices of your audience. Each search query is like a vote that shouts “I want more content about this!”.

So how do we do keyword research? How do we identify the search terms that people are Googling and create marketing content designed to answer these exact queries?

This process begins with understanding how people search online. In order to master the art of finding the perfect keywords to target, let’s take a look at the latest trends in Google’s search algorithms.

The Rise of Semantic Search

The Rock: Hey Siri, what’s the temperature like in Rome today?

Siri: The high temperature in Rome for today will be 80 degrees and the low will be 59 degrees.

Search is constantly evolving.

In an effort to provide more accurate search results, Google has gravitated towards what is known as semantic search. This is the ability to put searches into context in order to measure intent and meaning. Similar algorithmic innovations have led to Apple’s Siri.

The use of semantic search has completely changed the way we perform modern search queries today. A decade ago, people stuck with what was short and simple. If they wanted to find the best pizza places in New York City, they would type in “Pizza New York.” However, with Google’s Hummingbird update and the algorithmic improvements to semantic searches, people now are more inclined to type in “Where is the best pizza place in New York City.”

This trend has led to a surge in popularity for long-tail keywords.

As you can see from this Moz diagram, roughly 70 percent of search queries are now long-tail keywords.

Build Your Preliminary Keyword List

Let’s get started with all the various ways of finding keywords related to your niche so that no stone is left unturned.

1. Brainstorm broad content marketing ideas

The first step is to cast your net as wide as reasonably possible. We’ll use our ideas now to come up with a far more detailed and accurate list of keywords later.

For now, brainstorm all the different content marketing ideas that relate to your business niche and write them down. My company, ResumeGo, offers resume writing services, so these would be some of the keywords that immediately pop into my head:

• Write resume
• Write cover letter
• Resume writing
• Best resume writing service
• CV writing service
• Buy resume
• Buy cover letter
• Professional resume writers

I only listed a few examples to give you some ideas, but of course your list should be longer.

2. Use Google’s recommendations

You can also perform a search and see similar searches recommended by Google. You can find these recommendations at the bottom of the first search page on Google under “Searches Related to ___”.

Those are some more potential keywords to consider.

3. Consider your Competitors

Often times the work has already been done for you! There are many tools that can help spy on your competitors’ keywords, such as Moz, SimilarWeb, and SpyFu.

One caveat to this approach is that the keywords you are finding are the ones that your competitors are using to SEO their company’s main sales page, as opposed to their marketing content. While there should be a lot of overlap between the two, content marketing keywords are generally more specific and long-tailed.

A different approach that remedies this problem is to copy keywords straight from your competitors’ marketing content. So how do we do this?

The first way is to check your competitors’ social media accounts. Once they have new content up, they will be sure to mention it. That’s your chance to see the content marketing they’ve been working on and decide whether or not their keywords are worth copying.

Another method is to track your competitors’ links. Content marketing is often done in unison with link building. Your competitors most likely create content on blogging sites. Within the articles they submit, there are external backlinks that point back to their own websites. Those links can be followed like a trail of breadcrumbs to track what they’ve been up to. Moz and Majestic are tools that are great for doing this. Here’s a look at what Moz found when I looked up Easel.ly, an infographics company.

From looking at just the top results, these are some keywords I’d potentially add if I were in the same industry:

• Free tools infographics
• Royalty-free images
• Free graphic design software
• Tools social media content
• Infographic creator tools

Do this same competitor analysis for each of your top competitors and you’ll be sure to have a complete list of the topics they’ve covered.

4. Get customer feedback

Don’t forget, content marketing should be customer-centric. One of the best ways to know what content you should create is to find out from your customers. There are a number of ways to go about asking, whether it’s through customer surveys, social media, or just giving them a phone call. Listen to what they have to say, and jot down some unique ideas or suggestions that you might have missed yourself. Sometimes their responses can really surprise you!

Use your list to find keywords that you really want to target

Now that you have a list of potential keywords, it’s time to use keyword tools that will flesh out your content marketing ideas and allow you to create your final list of keywords.

While there are many keyword tools available on the web, it’s important to realize that every single one of these tools is really just pulling data from Google’s Keyword Planner. Only Google itself really knows the most popular search queries typed into its search engine. No outsiders have access to this information.

Instead, these other tools make inferences and estimates based off many factors and sources – one of which is Google’s own Keyword Planner. So, let’s go straight to the source of all the keywords data by using the Keyword Planner to create our ultimate keyword list!

The first thing you’ll want to do is create a Google AdWords account and start a campaign. Only after creating your campaign will Google grant you full access to their keyword planner. Here’s what I mean:

Average monthly searches you’ll see before creating your campaign.

Average monthly searches you’ll see after creating your campaign.

Creating a campaign allows you to see a more specific estimate of the average monthly search volume. Showing a range of 100,000 – 1,000,000 searches is nowhere near as helpful as knowing that there are 368,000 searches.

Once your account is set up, access Google’s Keyword Planner and enter in the keywords you gathered earlier.

Feel free to change the default settings to gear your search towards your target audience. In many cases, you’ll want to specify the location as the United States and set the language to English.

Once you hit “Get ideas,” you’ll be able to see a long list of keywords under the “Keyword ideas” section. This will give you a strong foundation for all the major short-tail keywords to add to your list.

However, what’s arguably even more important is the “Ad group ideas” tab. This is where you can really break down your broad keywords to find the exact long-tail keywords that make up the majority of searches. Simply click on each Ad group to get a more detailed keyword list.

By repeating this process with all the content marketing ideas you were able to generate from before, you’ll be able to build a comprehensive list of all the keywords that your content marketing can potentially target.

Picking the very best keywords to target

You’re almost there. You’ve got your completed list of keywords. Now it’s time to pick the ones you actually want to target with your content marketing.  Be careful though, because there are a lot of different elements that go into deciding which keywords are right for you, and you should be wary of common keyword planning mistakes.

Here are some factors you should consider:

1. Search Volume: This is the average number of times the keyword is searched every month.

Things to be aware of:

• Contextualize the volume numbers you see. There are exact matches, phrase matches, and broad matches. Check out Google’s support guide on these match types.
• Remember that these are per-month numbers.
• Take into account the volume trend. Is the overall trend going up or down?
• Consider negative keywords – they can sometimes make the volume numbers you actually care about look higher than they really are.
• Higher volumes usually means more competition, so it’ll usually be harder to rank for the most popular keywords.
• Google’s Keyword Planner, Moz, SEMrush, etc… all display different results partly due to the variables mentioned above, and partly due to other details of how they measure search volume

2. Keyword Difficulty (KD): This is the level of difficulty of ranking for the keyword.

Things to be aware of:

• This data is not shown on Google’s Keyword Planner. Don’t mistake the “Competition” column for KD.
• Higher difficulty usually means more potential value.
• Numbers aren’t very accurate on many keyword tools, so do your own research. I recommend using Moz’s toolbar.
• Use Moz to check the Page Authorities for the results on the first page. The higher the Page Authorities, the harder it will be to rank for the keyword.

3. Cost-per-click (CPC): True to its name, this shows how much advertisers are willing to pay for users to click on an advertisement shown for that particular keyword.

Things to be aware of:

• CPC stats can be very misleading when it comes to valuing your content marketing keywords because your audience won’t be coming from Google ads.
• Higher CPCs generally means that the keyword is more valuable on a per-search basis.
• If two keywords have the same volume, but different CPCs, the one that has the higher CPC is usually more valuable. However, it will most likely be harder to rank for as well.

4. Content Relevance: Not all content is created equal. The content you create needs to resonate with your specific audience and generate interest in what your company is about. What do I mean?

Let’s imagine that you’re a content marketing agency. There are two keyword phrases you can target:

“how to hire a content marketing agency”

or

“how to create marketing content for free”

Although I’m sure these two keyword phrases don’t actually share the following similarities, let’s pretend for a moment that the two phrases share identical search volume, keyword difficulty, and cost-per-click numbers.

With that being true, these two keyword phrases are not equally valuable to you. The first keyword phrase is going to generate you more leads because the users searching for that phrase are going to be more inclined to hire your agency. That’s why they searched the keyword to begin with.

On the other hand, people searching for the second keyword phrase are specifically looking for free content and will most likely not be in a spending mood.

5. Estimated Costs: Creating content to adequately target specific keywords will require varying amounts of time, money, and effort. In some situations, you might find that targeting a certain keyword also allows you to SEO your landing page at the same time. So be on the lookout for shortcuts that might make ranking for a keyword more cost-efficient than it would otherwise be. That’s how you can find real money-makers!

In Conclusion

Your content marketing strategy can surpass all expectations or fail epically depending on the keywords you choose to target. The key is to take your time and be thorough in your research.

Luckily, all the keyword tools and data you need are right there at your fingertips. Use them wisely and you can create a keyword-driven marketing strategy that will get your content onto the front page of search engine results and inspire your audience to take action.

Why does Google care so much about this? According to a report by Starcounter, the number of mobile users on the web surpassed the number of traditional computing platforms in October 2016. Mobile users contributed over 51 percent of total web visits. Another study revealed that more than half of the respondents spent less than 15 second on a webpage.

AMP came into existence because of Google’s obsession with a better user experience. The median load time for an AMP page is 0.7 seconds—massively faster than the 22 second load time of traditional pages.

What is Google AMP?

Google AMP aims to deliver information to a mobile user as fast as possible by stripping out third-party Javascript. AMP loads text-based content first, followed by additional content when the remainder of the page has loaded.

Unlike Facebook’s Instant Articles, which has similar features, AMP is not restricted to one platform. It is an open source project, available to all publishers on the web. On mobile, AMP search results are displayed in the search “carousel” above the rest of the results, and feature the acronym tag of “AMP” along with a thunderbolt icon.

AMP-enabled pages provide an improved user experience. This is beneficial for marketers and publishers as well. Fewer people bounce to a different website when quickly offered relevant information.

AMP Gives Businesses an SEO Advantage

AMP-ready websites display above their non-AMP counterparts in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)—a significant SEO advantage. Google insists that being AMP ready is not the only criterion considered in their rankings. But they have made clear that for two websites with similar performance, the AMP-ready one will rank higher. For instance, consider two blogs which contain ‘how to’ guides about the same topic. Google will display the AMP-ready website higher than its competition.

This is especially beneficial for upcoming businesses trying to get themselves noticed. Featuring in the top carousel of SERPs guarantees higher visibility and click throughs. According to a study by online ad network Chitika, the top SERP result gets 33 percent of search traffic for a query. This number dips to 19 percent of traffic for the second highest result. Google reports that a brand can increase unaided brand awareness by 46 percent by simply showing up in mobile search ad results. In the same report, Google revealed that more than half of smartphone users have discovered a new brand or product while searching on their smartphones. (Check out the do’s and don’ts of SEO for content curation.)

Who is AMP Meant For?

Google has become much more than a platform where people search for products or services. It’s the place you search for answers. Google is very efficient when it comes to simple questions. For a question like, “How far is Mars from the Earth?” the results look like this:

However, when searching for something more complicated like, “Why did the US launch missiles in Syria?” you have to depend on relevant articles presented on the SERP. This is when the need for loading another page arises—which AMP makes much more convenient.

However, Google AMP is not only good for news, blogs, and articles. The Google carousel is equally effective when it comes to ecommerce websites. In fact, in June 2016 Ebay announced “about 8 million AMP-based browse nodes are available in production.” Which means they have taken the step towards AMP-ready pages for a large chunk of their webpages.

Advantages of AMP:

• Unless Google fiddles with the way it displays AMP pages, they are ranked above other results on a SERP page.
• Since Google AMP is an open source initiative, contributions are not limited to Google’s developers and can be made by everyone. This means AMP technology will be highly adaptive to future technologies and trends.
• Unlike Facebook, Google AMP is available for every publisher, across every platform on the web. This means anyone with a little drive in them can potentially expose their content to a larger audience.
• Adobe Analytics, comScore, Parse.ly, and Chartbeat will offer separate analytic tools for AMP. If you wish to develop your own analytics for AMP, the instructions are available on the official website.

Limitations of AMP:

• AMP excludes external JavaScripts. This means everything other than the website content is either absent or downgraded. So a brand has to choose between an aesthetically designed page that compliments its content (opt out of AMP), or a page that relies solely on content to bring repeat visitors.
• There is no benefit to AMP for non-publisher sites. A major reason is the absence of external JavaScripts.
• AMP content does not feature any kind of forms. This means generating leads through an “AMP-ed” page is next to impossible.
• For broad search terms such as “Mars,” AMP results appear above sponsored links. This means a decline in paid search impressions for your webpage.

How to Use AMP for Your Business

If the focus of your business is the content you develop, whether blogs or articles, optimizing for AMP should be at the top of your list. The instructions for converting webpages into Google AMP formats are freely available on the official AMP page. There is plenty of material to use as a guide to optimizing for AMP.

If you have a WordPress blog, optimizing for AMP is extremely simple.

• Search the WordPress plugins for ‘AMP.’
• Download the AMP plugin along with the PageFrog plugin.
• Once installed and enabled, the WordPress AMP plugin will optimize your content to AMP.
• PageFrog can customize the design of the website. It has several design element options including, but not limited to colors, layout, logos, and fonts.
• PageFrog settings also allow to you select pages for optimization, instead of optimizing every page.
• Your new AMP pages can also be connected to Google Analytics using PageFrog. It also lets you enable ads on AMP Pages.

If you plan to use Google Analytics with AMP, set up a separate property for AMP pages. AMP analytics are limited; they work very differently to traditional pages. (To really understand analytics for content marketing, read The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics.)

Conclusion

If your website deals in written content and does not involve selling products, or other ecommerce activities, you should immediately make the move to Google AMP. Adopting AMP now will boost the visibility of your content, and the resulting impressions.

AMP analytics are currently limited, but Google expects to increase AMP tracking functionality. The right time to make the shift is passing as more businesses migrate towards AMP. Get ahead of the curve—make the move now. For further actionable SEO insights, read WordStream founder Larry Kim’s 8 Mind Blowing SEO Experiments That Will Forever Change Your Approach to SEO.

Even if you know little to nothing about SEO, Google has made two things clear:

• It’s important that other websites link to yours. Since the beginning, links have helped Google figure out how to rank all the content that exists on the web.
• You need to publish relevant content. If you want people to link to you, you need great content. And it needs to match the intent of the person searching for the things you sell or know lots about.

But Google is evolving.

Welcome to the Machine Learning Era

While still incredibly important for SEO, links and great content aren’t enough to guarantee top rankings on their own. That’s because Google is increasingly using machine learning to determine how web pages rank in search results.

Since Google started relying more on machine learning to power its search results, one new thing has become clear to me: user engagement metrics are changing the way you should approach SEO.

Machine learning systems such as Google RankBrain reward high engagement with better visibility. So you should focus on two user engagement metrics if you want better rankings:

1. Increasing click-through rate (CTR): This is the percentage of people who click on your listing in the search results.
2. Increasing dwell time: This is how long visitors stay on your website after clicking through from search results.

Here’s a simple diagram to explain how machine learning works.

This explanation isn’t just based on opinion or speculation (or what Google has said publicly). It’s based on me running multiple experiments and analyzing the surprising results.

Prepare to have your mind blown! Here are eight crazy SEO experiments that will change how you think about SEO forever.

8. Higher CTR = Higher Search Rankings?

If you’re looking for signs of machine learning and RankBrain at work, look no further than our organic search click-through rate experiment.

This click curve, based on analysis of 1,000 keywords from the Google Search Console for the WordStream site, clearly illustrates the zero-sum nature of Google’s search results. In each period, the pages occupying the most prominent positions got more and more clicks, while the lower positions got less and less.

Heading forward, Google will reward pages that attract engagement with higher positions, and push down pages with low engagement.

7. Does CTR Impact Rankings?

Google says they don’t use CTR as a direct ranking factor. But that could also be interpreted as an implicit acknowledgement that CTR can indirectly influence your rankings.

We wanted to find out. For our next experiment, we tried to isolate the natural relationship between CTR and ranking by taking the difference between an observed organic search CTR minus the expected CTR.

This chart illustrates the difference between what I term “unicorns” and “donkeys.”

• Unicorns: Pages that beat the expected average organic CTR for a given position were far more likely to rank in the top four positions.
• Donkeys: Pages that failed to beat the expected organic search CTR were more likely to appear in positions 6–10.

The good news: increasing your engagement by three percent should help move you one position higher in organic position, on average.

6. What Happens When you Make a Headline More Clickable?

More people click on it. Duh!

In this experiment, we decided to change the title of one of our pages (“Guerrilla Marketing: 20+ Examples & Strategies to Stand Out”). It was ranking in eighth position and had a CTR of one percent. A total donkey!

So, guided by a proven headline formula, we changed it to “20+ Jaw-Dropping Guerrilla Marketing Examples & Strategies.” Nothing else on the page changed—we didn’t add or edit any of the text, build any links, or add any images.

What happened?

Our retitled page jumped up to the fifth position in Google and the CTR increased to 4.2 percent.

And, oh yeah, organic traffic increased by 112 percent over five months!

Boosting your CTR is super valuable for SEO. In addition to getting more clicks, a higher CTR can help improve your rankings, which results in even more clicks.

5. Do Engagement Rates Impact Rankings?

You want searchers to stick around after they click on your result and land on your website. We know this is important because Google measures dwell time.

One big problem: we can’t measure dwell time—only Google can. So we have to look at other user engagement metrics such as time on site and bounce rate as a proxy for dwell time.

Our next experiment did just that, and we found some interesting results. Look at the “kinks” in these two graphs:

These graphs show that, on average, pages with lower bounce rates and higher time on site are more likely to appear in the top six organic search result positions. Pages with higher bounce rates and lower time on site, however, were more likely to rank seventh on the page, or lower.

4. Can We See the Impact of Time on Site on SEO?

Absolutely! And so can you.

We used the WordStream site for this experiment, looking at time on site and organic traffic before and after Google rolled out RankBrain. The results are stunning.

Before:

After:

Google figured out that some of our pages were ranking well, but had below average time on site. Those pages no longer rank or bring is nearly as much traffic.

This experiment really shows Google’s machine learning algorithms at work. Your traffic won’t vanish overnight. It will gradually disappear. If you have any pages with time on site that are below average, those are your most at risk pages.

3. How Does Google Pick Featured Snippets?

This is what a featured snippet looks like on Google:

But wait—why is Google using a featured snippet from a page only ranked in Position four (WordStream), instead of a page that ranks in Position one (Moz)?

To find out, I analyzed data for the 981 featured snippets WordStream has earned. As it turns out, content ranking as far back as Page seven of Google results can become a featured snippet:

Digging deeper into Google Analytics and Search Console data, it turns out featured snippets are not chosen based on traditional ranking factors, word count, or even where you rank.

Based on my analysis, featured snippets are awarded to pages that have an unusually high CTR and unusually high time on site.

2. Social Shares and Rankings: What’s the Real Relationship?

For years many people have wrongly assumed that one of Google’s ranking factors is the total number of social shares your content gets.

But there is a definite correlation between social shares and organic rankings. We ran an experiment to figure out the link. Here’s what we discovered:

Based on our analysis, it’s not about the total number of shares. It’s about how many people engaged with your content. High engagement rates correlate with high CTR, and vice versa.

My theory is that the same emotions that make people share content on social media also make people click on that content in search results. This is especially true for headlines with ridiculously high CTRs.

1. What’s the Relationship Between Engagement and Conversion Rates?

Getting people excited enough to click on your search result increases the odds that they will also ultimately convert (whether it’s completing a purchase, subscribing, completing a form, or taking some other type of conversion action).

We know this because we gathered and analyzed lots of data. Here’s just one example of what we discovered in multiple WordStream client accounts:

As this chart illustrates, on average, increasing your CTR by two times can boost your conversion rate by 50 percent.

If you have unicorn CTRs—20 or 25 percent—then your conversion rate will be around two percent. But if you have average or below average conversion rates—around one percent or less—you’ll also have average conversion rates.

See? Increasing your CTR increases your conversion rates. Pretty amazing!

What’s it All Mean for SEO?

User engagement is the new unicorn of ranking factors. Here are three key takeaways:

1. CTR impacts organic search ranking: If you want to reach a more prominent position in search results, you need to beat the expected CTR for that given position.
2. Dwell time impacts ranking: Dwell time validates the CTR and featured snippet eligibility. It can override other “traditional” ranking signals.
3. Machine learning is changing everything: It isn’t just Google search and SEO. Other machine learning systems reward high engagement. YouTube uses machine learning to recommend videos. AdWords ad targeting is entirely based on machine learning. Facebook uses it for its news feed and ad targeting. We’re living in a machine learning revolution.

For greater insight into just how well your SEO efforts are working, download The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics eBook.

With the nights now looming long, it’s that time of season when we begin looking forward to the next year and thinking about what we need to change to stay competitive. There’s not much more we can learn about 2016, but there’s a lot we can learn from 2016. This article examines the ways content marketing and content marketing SEO will continue to evolve in the next 12 months.

#1 Trend: Content Will Become More Labor Intensive and Higher Quality

Taking more time to produce longer content is the big trend in content marketing. Marketers are spending a lot more time on each post and writing a lot longer than they did in the past. My company Orbit Media Studios just finished our third annual survey of 1,000 bloggers and the trend is clear.

• In 2016, the average blog post took 3 hours 16 minutes to write. That’s a 26% increase from last year.
• The average blog post is 1,050 words long, up 19% from last year.

It’s a quest for quality and more bloggers are going big. This is probably the biggest trend in content marketing.

Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Increase in Importance

I don’t see anything reducing the importance of influencer marketing, unless celebrities somehow become less famous. Hard to imagine that happening. But there are influencer marketing tactics that may decline. For example, readers may get tired of mega-roundups, CTRs for those posts may decline and results would drop. This could make those giant roundups less effective and less popular.

Otherwise influencer marketing is on the rise, and that probably won’t slow down in our lifetimes. Orbit’s survey found that it’s become a more popular tactic every year for the last three years. Take a look:

This doesn’t surprise me. Here’s why:

• There are people in every industry who have become influential over large groups of people. In the future, they will likely become even more influential.
• There are brands that want very badly to connect with those people. In the future, this will also continue.
• The tools and tactics that connect those brands to those people have become more efficient and effective. This will also continue.

So look for more mini-celebrity endorsements and more collaborative content. Influencer marketing rewards those that are good at networking and personal branding. The future belongs to friendly, generous people!

Artificial Intelligence is Changing SEO

RankBrain is the name of Google’s machine-learning artificial intelligence system. It helps sort through Google’s search results and is an important new part of how Google is improving their rankings.

• Before: Google engineers (humans) created hypothesis about possible improvements to its algorithm, then they made changes within test environments. Next those test search results were shown to small armies of quality raters (humans) who then scored the search results against criteria provided by Google. If the tests looked good, Google would make the change.

• Now: Google is built to use machine learning (artificial intelligence) to create and run its own tests to see how they perform with a group of searchers. If the searchers click on a search result without immediately searching again, that’s a good sign. If they click on a search result and stay on that page rather than immediately hitting the back button, that’s a good sign.

So now more than ever, search optimization is about quality. It’s about the visitor. It’s about making great pages. But what’s a great page? It’s a page that people land on and love.

To maximize your visitors’ time on page, to increase your visitors’ “dwell time,” to reduce the “short click” and to send strong “user-interaction signals,” you need to build pages that keep scanners moving and make visitors forget they have a back button. Here’s how:

1. Start with a visual. A strong featured image helps get the visitor engaged.
2. Add a video. Videos are the strongest visuals. Adding videos high on pages is a good way to keep visitors.
3. Short paragraphs. No one wants to read a long paragraph on the Internet.
4. Subheads and bolding. These are types of formatting that keep scanners moving.
5. Internal links. This encourages visitors to click forward, not back.
6. Long, detailed articles.

Here’s the “human factors” section of Orbit’s content checklist. Add as many of these as you can!

As always, if we’re doing SEO, our goal is the make the best page on the Internet for our topic. It’s good for visitors and it’s good for RankBrain. Google’s new AI system has great ways to find quality. Your job is to create that quality.

Great Content Marketing Focuses on the End User

There’s one, all important thing about content. It must answer the “what’s in it for me” question. It has to be focused on the reader.

This should almost go without saying, but a lot of people miss it. There’s one, sure-fire way to make sure that your content is empathetic, once and for all. It’s to write your content mission statement. It’s easy and powerful. You can use this template:

source: How to Create a Content Mission Statement

Just this morning I was working with a client on this. They expedite passports and visas and they were looking for content marketing tips on their blog. We talked though a mission and it took just a few minutes. Here’s what we came up with:

“Swift Passport Services blog, email and social content is where
international travelers find
passport, visa and international travel tips
to make traveling easier”

That’s it! We all agreed that this was exactly right. Then we looked at the blog and noticed the “Company News & Announcement” section. It obviously didn’t fit, so we killed it instantly. Then we took out the domestic travel section. Suddenly, and forever after, they have a better blog.

Empathy is the greatest marketing skill.

How Will Voice Search Impact Content Marketing?

This is another mega-trend. According to Gartner’s predictions, we’re moving into a world of screen-less search. Here’s an excerpt:

By 2020, 30 percent of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen.

New audio-centric technologies, such as Google Home and Amazon’s Echo, are making access to dialogue-based information ubiquitous and spawning new platforms based on “voice-first” interactions. By eliminating the need to use ones’ hands and eyes for browsing, vocal interactions extend the utility of web sessions to contexts such as driving, cooking, walking, socializing, exercising and operating machinery. As a result, the share of waking hours devoid of instant access to online resources will approach zero.

OK, so we’ll be talking to Alexa, Siri, and Google, and they’ll be talking back to us. We ask, they answer. Not a pixel in sight. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t adapt to natural language search. Here’s what you can do to get your content ready.

1. Write complete, full-sentence questions in your articles, rather than breaking it up between several sentences.
   How long does it take to write a typical blog post?

1. Write complete, full-sentence answers in your articles.
   The typical 500-word blog post takes 2 to 2.5 hours to write.

1. Use long, specific phrases in your titles and headers.
   The Length of Time to Write Blog Posts: 5 Research Studies

Combine these and you’ll increase the chance of your content marketing appearing in the knowledge box at the top of search results. I can’t say for sure if this affects your clickthrough rate (Google is giving visitors the answer right there in the search results page) but it is fun to see yourself at the top.

Dr. Pete from MOZ called this “ranking number zero.” If nothing else, it’s an appearance of your brand!

As search evolves, natural language search will still happen in browsers, on screens. Super long, natural language-type keyphrases are entered into Google all the time. There will be winners and losers, as always. These tips should help you win.

Top Five Skills a Marketer Needs to be Proficient in for SEO in 2017

There are core skills that you can’t really do without. Here’s my top 5…

1. Writing
   It should be obvious, but it’s not. A lot of SEOs don’t really work to improve their writing skills. But this is the foundation of everything. What are people searching for? Content. What ranks? Content. Why does the visitor stay on the page? Content.
   
   If you aren’t confident in your writing skills, focus on this. You’re eventual goal is to make the best page on the Internet for your topic. If you’re not doing that, you’re really not doing SEO.
2. Research
   There are all kinds of research involved in SEO. They are all important.
   Researching topics: What should we blog about? (here’s how to research blog topics)
   Researching keywords: What is this audience searching for?
   Researching influencers: Who in this niche is creating content for relevant websites?
   Research as a format for content: What are people likely to cite, reference, mention and link to
3. Outreach
   To rank, you need authority. To get authority, you need links. To get links, you need visibility among content creators. To be visible to these people, you need to do outreach. This is a big part of the job. Good SEOs are friendly online networkers, who know how to use social media, who know how to connect with people online.
4. Visual Design
   Surprised by this one? You shouldn’t be. Strong visuals can make a big difference in rankings—it’s a secret weapon for great SEOs. Here are examples:
   – A useful infographic is more likely to get picked up by other bloggers, which is good for authority.
   – Helpful screenshots can make a post more useful, and more likely to get referenced by other sites.
   –  A compelling featured image increases visibility in social media, making it more likely to be seen by content creators.
   – A strong video can keep visitors on the page longer, increasing “dwell time,” sending good user-interaction signals to Google
5. Analytics
   It’s called “optimization” because it’s ongoing. This isn’t a one-time action. It’s a series of actions. And they are all based on data. Without Analytics, you’ll have no idea what’s working, what’s failing, and what’s almost working. Sometimes, a piece of content just needs a little nudge. But without data, you don’t know where to push.

Don’t have these skills? Don’t worry. You’re going to have a very long, successful career and there’s plenty of time to learn them all. Start sooner and study harder if you want to ramp up fast.

Work harder than the guy next to you. Study like it’s finals week. And never, never give up! 

SEO is constantly evolving, so our approach to it needs to constantly evolve too. To find out more about the future of SEO, sign up for Curata’s Content Marketing Expert Series Webinar with me on The Future of SEO below.

Content curation is the practice of finding, organizing, annotating and sharing the best and most relevant third-party content for your audience. There’s no doubt curation has become an integral part of today’s content marketing. The number of concerns surrounding the practice however, have created doubt in the minds of some content marketers before they understand the benefits of curation done right.

Curation Pros and Con(cern)s

Pros: Content curation allows marketers to publish fresh, relevant content at a higher volume than a 100 percent content creation strategy allows. The variety of insights content marketers can publish offers readers more diverse perspectives from their peers and other third-party sources. This makes your content more credible by positioning your organization as an objective, go-to resource. Not to mention it saves marketers time and money, and avoids burning out staff.

Concerns: Some marketers may be concerned that content curation means duplicate content, which may hurt search engine optimization (SEO). If content is duplicated, it would compete for search rankings. There’s also concern regarding whether content curation involves too much outbound linking, sending readers away from your site. When done right, however, outbound links and curated content can actually improve SEO.

Here are some do’s and don’ts for effective content curation SEO.

Content Curation SEO Do’s:

Do: Curate for your audience, not for search engine bots

A great marketer knows to always keep your target audience top of mind. Always. If people like your content, they will link back to you as an industry resource, helping your search engine ranking in the process. It’s far more effective than trying to game the system. As Google’s Matt Cutts says, “Good quality trumps SEO.”

Do: Be selective about your content

Make sure it consistently provides the most value possible for readers. Content you curate should be highly relevant to your topic, provide more perspectives for your audience, and be annotated with your own insights and opinions in order to increase its value. Share curated content on multiple channels (newsletters, social media, blogs, etc.) to ensure it reaches a wide audience and gains as much exposure as possible. The more popular your content is, the more likely it’ll show up in search results.

Do: Add your feeds to Google Blog Search index

If you submit your RSS feeds to Google Blog Search, Google will consider you a more credible source of information and know when you update content. Most importantly, Google will consider you as a dynamic “blog” source, rather than just a static website. This means they’ll re-crawl more often and your rankings will improve. In addition, you will not only show up in Google Search results, but Google Blog Search as well.

To do this, head over to https://www.google.com/submityourcontent/

Choose your content program:

Add your URL:

And submit your content to be indexed.

Do: Post your curated content to Google+ with backlinks

Contrary to popular belief, Google does not factor in shares on social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to their search algorithms, because they don’t have licenses to that data. On the other hand, Google does consider activity on their own social media channel, Google+, when determining ranking status.

Do: Annotate your curated posts and add your perspective

Make sure the content you’ve written is longer than the excerpt you’ve taken from the original article. With curation, it’s best practice to give more than you take for two reasons:

• Ethics. Search engine optimization aside, you want to make sure you are ethically curating when relying on someone else’s content. For further reading, take a deep dive into the ethics of content marketing.

• Improve SEO by avoiding duplicate content. When you annotate curated pieces with your own insights or opinions, the content you write allows search engines to pick up the piece as a separate source of information. This means you’re not just taking and reposting content from third-party sources. Annotating also provides more context and insight for readers, increasing its value.

Do: Retitle all your curated posts

New titles ensure you’re not competing with the original article in search results. The content in titles is taken into deeper consideration by search engines than body text. Use this to your benefit by including your own keywords in new titles.

Do: Prominently link back to the original article in your curated piece

From an ethical standpoint, this allows readers to easily click on the original post for the full text, and gives proper credit to the author. Outbound linking also improves SEO. Links to quality content show search engines you’re a credible source with dependable information.

Content Curation SEO Don’ts:

Don’t: Repost the full text of articles

This is not only unethical; it hurts your SEO. If you repost too much of the original article—especially without annotating, search engines won’t be able to know which content out of yours and the original to index, or which version to rank in query results. Link metrics may also either be split between pages or designated to just one of the posts. If you do this excessively, Google may consider you a spam blog or “splog” for short.

Don’t: Curate from a single source over and over

Readers, and search engines, rank variety as value. If your site/blog has outbound links to a variety of sites, Google knows your site is not just a front and that your content is credible and information packed.

Don’t: Share duplicate full size images

When curating content, be ethical by using only a thumbnail size of the original image. Best practices for search engine optimization include altering the image alt text, adjusting image size, and creating a relevant image name. These are all things Google takes into consideration when ranking images.

Alt text is how search engines understand the image. For example, when you see a picture of a cute puppy, you’re able to recognize what it is by looking at the picture. But search engines can’t do this, so they need text to recognize the image and rank it appropriately. Include the keywords you want to represent your image in the alt text. For example, <img src=”cute-puppy.jpg” alt=”Cute Puppy” /> lets search engines know what the content in the picture is, so it’s easier for users to find it in search queries.

The size of images also counts, although indirectly. Google ranks pages on how long they take to load. Large images may slow down your page speed, which can affect your search rank. That said, make sure the size and aesthetic of your images matches the look and feel you want on your page—just be sure to balance size with speed.

Naming images can also help when optimizing for search. Before uploading an image, give it a file name to match its context, as well as the content on the page. For example, if you’re curating a blog about the USA Olympic teams and you upload an image of the hockey team, name it USAOlympicHockeyTeam.jpeg. Makes sense, right? This not only helps Google understand the context of the image, but also ensures that the image is relevant to the page copy. Because Google considers the content of the page as a whole, this helps boost your rank on search.

Things to Consider

Using nofollow attributes on hyperlinks:

A nofollow is a value added to the HTML of a link that tells search engines not to consider the link when ranking it in a search index. This keeps the link juice in your curated piece and gives less SEO credit to the original source. Nofollows are unethical because they unfairly take search credit away from the original publisher. Google may also realize you’re using too many nofollows and engaging in a practice known as “link hoarding” for which you may be penalized.

Curata would only recommend using nofollows for aggregated content. Aggregated content can hurt SEO because it’s duplicative with no original added insight. Using nofollows on aggregated content on your site can tell search engines to not credit the duplicate link.

Here’s a great infographic that dives deeper into the methodology of nofollows.

Using your domain versus a subdomain:

(curata.com = domain, www.blog.curata.com = subdomain)

• Domains: Keeping everything on your domain concentrates all inbound links in one place. This keeps everything tightly coupled to your brand and creates a base SEO for all the pages on your domain. This can help boost search results.

• Subdomains: Perhaps your blog platform is hosted on a different server than your corporate site, but you still want to retain your corporate domain in the URL. Subdomains can also be used to categorize between different branches of  your site, such as products, services or geographical regions.

• New Domains: New domains are also another option. These are not as tightly coupled to your original domain, so you can sometimes be more credible by appearing like a third-party resource. New domains can also be used as places to establish thought leadership on a certain topic and improve SEO. Curata uses Content Curation Marketing to provide an all-encompassing resource on content curation for readers.

Check out how these companies are using curation to boost their brand; some use domains, some use subdomains. Test yourself and see if you can tell which is which.

Using share bars/iframes

• A share bar, or iframe, is a sharing tool that often hovers over the third-party content. It typically includes your branding and a link back to your curated article. Here are some examples of share bars:

  • Hootsuite’s Owly Bar

• • ShareByCo’s Engagement Bar

• Pros: This can help improve the number of views on your curated content and increase your branding exposure. Share bars can capture more social media shares because they allow readers to share your curated content to their social pages with one click.

• Cons: They can be annoying for site visitors. If you’re going to use a share bar it’s best practice to give a reader the option to close it, otherwise it can intrude on the reading experience. Share bars can also unethically steal shares and linkbacks from the original publishers. Because the share bar does not display the original article’s URL, people who cite the content often mistake the share bar URL as the proper source. This erroneously gives the curator credit instead of the original author.

Check out this article for more information on the use of share bars and iframes.

Opening Links in a New Window/Tab:

• Pros: Readers are still on your site. Many publishers choose to have links open in a new window because they fear readers will click off on a third-party link and never return.

• Cons: Opening links in new tabs disables the back button, making it easier for readers to forget about your page. They may still have your tab open, but they’re no longer reading your information. We all know what our tab bar starts to look like when links are opening in new tabs. It makes the bar cluttered and disorienting when trying to backtrack to past pages. Having links open in a new tab can also be annoying for readers. They have the option to open tabs in new windows if they choose to.

Topic pages

• A topic page combines links (internal links such as blog posts AND links that are externally curated) about a single topic in one location.

• Tagging and categorizing content for topic pages gives readers an evergreen and information rich resource. Topic pages also help improve SEO for a few reasons.

1. 1. 1. Each topic page is focused around a specific term, so they’re keyword rich—which helps capture traffic from long tail search queries.
      2. Topic pages include links to all of these other indexable pages, creating higher SEO value in Google’s eyes. It’s also a different way of crosscutting your site content and creating more internal links.
      3. Your content is repurposed on topic pages, allowing you to get the most mileage out of it as well as reaching more readers.

• Check out this topic page for Barack Obama as an example.

• Green Data Center News, a content curation site focusing on technology and services for green IT and data centers, created a topic page on Barack Obama, linking to all the articles on their site that mention him. As a result, they’re the first search result in Google for “Barack Obama data center.” The internal linking on the page, as well as the ability to capture this long tail query, optimizes this topic page of curated articles for search.

In summary, content curation is an effective content marketing strategy to increase credibility, drive leads, and improve SEO. But you have to put the work in to curate content and not just aggregate. Annotate curated content with your own insights, change titles, link to credible articles, publish from a variety of sources, and always give more than you take when it comes to third-party content.

Need more information on content curation and how it can improve your content marketing strategy? Check out Curata’s 2016 Content Marketing Staffing and Tactics Study for information on how to improve the SEO of your content, increase leads and drive engagement.

]]> /blog/content-curation-seo-dos-and-donts/feed/ 22 /blog/seo-survival-guide-10-tips-for-content-marketing-success/ /blog/seo-survival-guide-10-tips-for-content-marketing-success/#comments Thu, 19 Feb 2015 16:27:40 +0000 /blog/?p=5082 Use these 10 SEO tactics to keep your content marketing strategy afloat in 2015....Read More

Just a few years ago, articles about SEO consisted almost entirely of advice on how to carry out the day-to-day technical aspects of keyword research, on-site optimization and link building. While these elements are certainly still necessary, their importance has declined and changed quite significantly.

Instead, marketers must create quality, long form content, and use SEO as just one of many content amplification strategies.

This article will walk you through the elements of SEO that are still important for content marketing success today.

1. Focus more on user intent and semantic search and less on individual keywords.

Since the release of Hummingbird last year, we’ve seen a shift away from keyword targeting in favor of focusing on semantic search. Google has become far more sophisticated when it comes to understanding the meaning behind search queries; so rather than returning a page based simply on keyword density, for instance, they’re able to return content that matches the actual meaning and intent behind the request.

When creating content, focus on questions your target market may be asking, rather than simply on two to three word catchphrases. Write meaty articles that cover all aspects of a particular topic, rather than writing shorter posts that target a popular keyword or phrase. Focus on the intent behind what your customers are looking for, and on how and where they’re using search (for instance, on mobile).

2. Create a mobile content marketing strategy—it’s essential in today’s world.

According to the Mobile Path to Purchase report, 60% of consumers use mobile exclusively to make purchase decisions. This should both excite and terrify marketers.

Optimizing for mobile is no longer simply about making sure you have a responsive website or a mobile app. Every aspect of your website and content needs to be optimized for mobile. In fact, I would argue that ‘mobile friendly’ should be replaced by ‘mobile first’. Here are 10 steps to creating a mobile-first content marketing strategy.

3. Work less on technical strategies and more on relationship building.

Many marketers have already figured out that simply having a technically sound SEO strategy in place isn’t enough. High search rankings can no longer be achieved simply by creating keyword-rich content, or by focusing on technical SEO compliance.

Rather, we’re seeing a shift towards relationship-based strategies like blogger outreach campaigns, reaching out to influencers on social media, and building relationships with brand advocates.

First, make sure your site and content are technically sound, and then move on to building and nurturing relationships that can be mutually beneficial for a long time to come.

4. Focus on hard-earned, high-quality links.

Link building is no longer about submitting your site to directories or asking other webmasters to include a link to your site. Instead, marketers should be focusing on building relationships and earning high-quality links through methods such as:

• Guest blogging on high-quality sites (See this guide for more benefits of guest blogging).
• Creating amazing resources that will naturally attract social shares and inbound links.
• Syndicating your content on popular sites in your niche (e.g. Business2Community).
• Reaching out to influential bloggers to form mutually-beneficial relationships.

For more ideas, see this refresher on link building for content marketing.

5. Remember to keep SEO in its proper place.

Too often I see business owners overblowing the importance of SEO. Don’t get me wrong: SEO is important, but it should only be one part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

Be sure to balance your focus and resources between the various sources of website traffic you’ll receive: social media, referral traffic from other sites, direct traffic, and offline referrals. Ideally, you’ll want these sources of traffic to be fairly evenly balanced. Putting all your efforts into SEO traffic can be dangerous: one algorithm change, and 90% of your traffic can potentially disappear overnight.

6. Optimize your on-page content.

Choosing a variety of long-tail key phrases that focus on conversational queries (for instance, “How do I cook a turkey?”) is still important, despite what my previous points may have suggested.

To optimize your on-page content, incorporate your key phrases into your:

• URLs: For example, blog.com/how-to-cook-a-turkey
• Title tag
• Heading tags (H1, H2, etc.)
• Throughout your content
• Alt image tags and image captions, where appropriate

Focus on creating content that can act as a definitive source on a topic, rather than simply targeting one or two keywords. One example of this is Curata’s Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics.

Long-form content stands a far better chance of ranking highly in the search engines; however this needs to be balanced with the fact that shorter, ‘catchier’ content may perform better for your mobile visitors.

7. Don’t forget about content distribution.

While this isn’t necessarily an SEO tip, it’s too important to leave out. In our rush to create more and more content in order to feed the content beast, many of us are neglecting to sufficiently promote and distribute content.

Optimizing for search is important, however according to one study, it typically only drives around a third of all website traffic. How else are you driving traffic to your valuable content?

In my post Why No One’s Reading Your Marketing Content, I outline some effective strategies for distributing your content:

1. Design a modular yet cohesive content plan: Create small bits of content that can be used in a variety of ways to maximize your resources. Use these ‘modules’ to lead your followers and readers through the purchase process.
2. Segment your audience: Customize your content to various segments of your audience to increase relevancy and conversions.
3. Pay for distribution: Social ads are huge in 2015, as are native ads on popular sites (like ‘suggested posts’ below a site’s own content).
4. Reach out to influencers: Focus on building relationships with influencers in your niche; once you’ve established these important connections, inbound links and social sharing of your content is often a natural result.

See Curata’s list of content promotion tools for a complete list of technologies that can help aid the distribution process.

8. Use an integrated approach to SEO rather than a segmented approach.

As already mentioned, SEO is no longer an isolated task that can be performed in a vacuum. Content marketing, SEO and social media all work hand in hand to drive traffic, build relationships and trust and grow your audience.

A large part of this will be understanding how to move your various leads through your funnel: for instance, attracting large volumes of traffic via search and social media, and then appropriately filtering this traffic through directing readers to various types of targeted content through your website and email content.

Ultimately, each stream of traffic should end up at a targeted, enticing offer, such as an eBook or webinar.

9. Ensure social media is a key component alongside your SEO strategy.

Articles with a large amount of social shares have been shown to increase search rankings (if not directly, than certainly indirectly through increased reach and visibility).

Being present and active on social media could act as a ‘brand signal’ to search engines that your content is credible and trustworthy. In this way, having a strong social media presence is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a ‘must have’.

See this post, 11 Effective Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Content, for more tips on promotion.

10. Most importantly: Concentrate on writing content your audience will find true value in.

Amazing content will become evergreen and will drive traffic for months or years to come. Don’t be afraid to over-invest in high-quality content that adds something interesting, unique, or insightful to the conversation. Sometimes it can take up to a year or two for a piece of content to truly hit its stride; so don’t be disheartened if your amazing article or blog post takes a while to catch on.

As your content gets shared on social media, it will accumulate more views. And as more people read it, it will naturally earn more inbound links, thus increasing your organic search rankings. If your content is non-egocentric, adds value, and you’re exposing it through all your channels, eventually it will get the attention it deserves.

What would you add to this list? What are your best SEO tips for content marketing success? 

For more tips on creating quality content, see Curata’s free eBook, How to Feed the Content Beast (Without Getting Eaten Alive).

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